UT tries to provide a phone OS, which is remarkably harder than porting a desktop distro to ARM and changing the screen size. I'm not sure what the point is of dunking on UT several times here.
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Linux Phones
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Community about running GNU/Linux on phones. Projects like Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Mobile, PostmarketOS, Mobian etc. Either on former Android phones or hardware like the PinePhone.
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The "problem" with UT is that normal GNU/Linux apps don't work on it, or only with significant adaptations. This makes UT not really usable for people that want "real" Linux on their phones. I can understand people being unhappy about that as in the end UT isn't really that much different from Android, which technically also runs Linux.
If you want Linux apps on your phone, wouldn't you have to have a compat layer a la WINE except that it's for x86->ARM rather than Windows->Linux? Wouldn't that make using Linux apps unattractive due to the overhead slowing them down? Plus, wouldn't devs have to implement a mobile mode for GUI apps for this to be a good UX? Not trying to bash the idea, just curious about how it would practically work.
No, why? Normal open-source Linux apps can be just compiled for ARM and most larger distros have ARM versions with pre-compiled ARM repositories. Newer Linux apps are also already responsive and usually work reasonably well on smaller screens and touchscreens, although some further improvements in that regard could be made.